Abstract
In this perspective article, we first recall the historic background of human-cyber-physical systems (HCPSs), and then introduce and clarify important concepts. We discuss the key challenges in establishing the scientific foundation from a system engineering point of view, including (1) complex heterogeneity, (2) lack of appropriate abstractions, (3) dynamic black-box integration of heterogeneous systems, (4) complex requirements for functionalities, performance, and quality of services, and (5) design, implementation, and maintenance of HCPS to meet requirements. Then we propose four research directions to tackle the challenges, including (1) abstractions and computational theory of HCPS, (2) theories and methods of HCPS architecture modelling, (3) specification and verification of model properties, and (4) software-defined HCPS. The article also serves as the editorial of this special section on cyber-physical systems and summarises the four articles included in this special section.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alur R, Courcoubetis C, Halbwachs N, et al., 1995. The algorithmic analysis of hybrid systems. Theor Comput Sci, 138(1):3–34. https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-3975(94)00202-T
Baheti R, Gill H, 2011. Cyber-physical systems. Impact Contr Technol, 12(1):161–166.
Banerjee A, Venkatasubramanian KK, Mukherjee T, et al., 2012. Ensuring safety, security, and sustainability of mission-critical cyber-physical systems. Proc IEEE, 100(1):283–299. https://doi.org/10.1109/JPROC.2011.2165689
Broy M, Cengarle MV, Geisberger E, 2012. Cyber-physical systems: imminent challenges. Proc 17th Monterey Workshop, p.1–28. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34059-8_1
Calvaresi D, Marinoni M, Sturm A, et al., 2017. The challenge of real-time multi-agent systems for enabling IoT and CPS. Proc Int Conf on Web Intelligence, p.356–364. https://doi.org/10.1145/3106426.3106518
Chen D, Doumeingts G, Vernadat F, 2008. Architectures for enterprise integration and interoperability: past, present and future. Comput Ind, 59(7):647–659. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compind.2007.12.016
Chen X, Liu Z, 2017. Towards interface-driven design of evolving component-based architectures. In: Hinchey M, Bowen JP, Olderog ER (Eds.), Provably Correct Systems. Springer, Cham, p.121–148. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48628-4_6
Darabseh A, Al-Ayyoub M, Jararweh Y, et al., 2015. SDStorage: a software defined storage experimental framework. IEEE Int Conf on Cloud Engineering, p.341–346. https://doi.org/10.1109/IC2E.2015.60
Dressler F, 2018. Cyber physical social systems: towards deeply integrated hybridized systems. Proc Int Conf on Computing, Networking and Communications, p.420–424. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCNC.2018.8390404
Gill H, 2010. Cyber-physical systems: beyond ES, SNs, SCADA. Proc Trusted Computing in Embedded Systems Workshop.
Giloi WK, 1997. Konrad Zuse’s Plankalkül: the first high-level, “non von Neumann” programming language. IEEE Ann History Comput, 19(2):17–24. https://doi.org/10.1109/85.586068
Gunes V, Peter S, Givargis T, et al., 2014. A survey on concepts, applications, and challenges in cyber-physical systems. KSII Trans Intern Inform Syst, 8(12):4242–4268. https://doi.org/10.3837/tiis.2014.12.001
He JF, 1994. From CSP to hybrid systems. In: Roscoe AW (Ed.), A Classical Mind: Essays in Honour of C. A. R. Hoare. Prentice Hall International, New York, USA, p.171–189.
Hoare CAR, 1985. Communicating Sequential Processes. Prentice Hall International, Englewood Cliffs, USA.
Hu J, Liu Z, Reed GM, et al., 2008. Ensemble engineering and emergence. In: Wirsing M, Banâtre JP, Hölzl M, et al. (Eds.), Software-Intensive Systems and New Computing Paradigms: Challenges and Visions. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, p.162–178. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-89437-7]_11
IEEE, 1990. IEEE Standard Computer Dictionary: a Compilation of IEEE Standard Computer Glossaries. IEEE, New York, USA.
Jararweh Y, Al-Ayyoub M, Darabseh A, et al., 2015. SDIoT: a software defined based Internet of Things framework. J Amb Intell Human Comput, 6(4):453–461. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12652-015-0290-y
Jararweh Y, Al-Ayyoub M, Ala’Darabseh, et al., 2016. Software defined cloud: survey, system and evaluation. Fut Gener Comput Syst, 58:56–74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2015.10.015
Khaitan SK, McCalley JD, 2015. Design techniques and applications of cyberphysical systems: a survey. IEEE Syst J, 9(2):350–365. https://doi.org/10.1109/JSYST.2014.2322503
Kindberg T, Fox A, 2002. System software for ubiquitous computing. IEEE Perv Comput, 1(1):70–81. https://doi.org/10.1109/MPRV.2002.993146
Kubicek H, Cimander R, Scholl HJ, 2011. Layers of interoperability. In: Kubicek H, Cimander R, Scholl HJ (Eds.), Organizational Interoperability in E-Government. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22502-4_7
Lee EA, 2006. Cyber-physical systems—are computing foundations adequate? NSF Workshop on Cyber-Physical Systems.
Lee EA, 2008. Cyber physical systems: design challenges. Proc 11th IEEE IntSymponObject and Component-Oriented Real-Time Distributed Computing, p.363–369. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISORC.2008.25
Lee EA, 2010. CPS foundations. Proc 47th Design Automation Conf, p.737–742. https://doi.org/10.1145/1837274.1837462
Lee EA, Neuendorffer S, Wirthlin MJ, 2003. Actor-oriented design of embedded hardware and software systems. J Circ Syst Comput, 12(3):231–260. https://doi.org/10.1142/S0218126603000751
Lee J, Lapira E, Bagheri B, et al., 2013. Recent advances and trends in predictive manufacturing systems in big data environment. ManufLett, 1(1):38–41. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mfglet.2013.09.005
Lindsey CH, Boom HJ, 1978. A modules and separate compilation facility for ALGOL 68. ALGOL Bull, (43):19-53.
Liskov B, Zilles S, 1974. Programming with abstract data types. Proc ACM SIGPLAN Symp on Very High Level Languages, p.50–59. https://doi.org/10.1145/800233.807045
Liu Z, Chen XH, 2014. Model-driven design of object and component systems. Proc 1st Int School Engineering Trustworthy Software Systems, p.152–255. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29628-9_4
Liu Z, Joseph M, 1996. Verification of fault tolerance and real time. Proc 26th Annual Int Symp on Fault-Tolerant Computing, p.220–229.
Liu Z, Joseph M, 1999. Specification and verification of fault-tolerance, timing, and scheduling. ACM Trans Program Lang Syst, 21(1):46–89. https://doi.org/10.1145/314602.314605
Liu Z, Ravn AP, Li X, 1998. Verifying duration properties of timed transition systems. Proc IFIP TC2/WG2.2, 2.3 Int Conf on Programming Concepts and Methods, p.327–345. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35358-6_22
Liu Z, Morisset C, Stolz V, 2008. A component-based access control monitor. Proc 3rd Int Symp on Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation, p.339–353.
Liu Z, Bowen JP, Liu B, et al., 2019. Software abstractions and human-cyber-physical systems architecture modelling. Proc 5th Int School En gineering Trustworthy Software Systems, p.159–219. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55089-9_5
Lu YJ, Cecil J, 2015. An Internet of Things (IoT) based cyber physical framework for advanced manufacturing. Proc Move to Meaningful Internet Systems: OTM 2015 Workshops, p.66–74. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26138-6_10
Lynch N, Segala R, Vaandrager F, 2003. Hybrid I/O automata. Inform Comput, 185(1):103–157. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0890-5401(03)00067-1
Lynch NA, 1996. Distributed Algorithms. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Francisco, USA.
Mei H, Guo Y, 2018. Toward ubiquitous operating systems: a software-defined perspective. Computer, 51(1):50–56. https://doi.org/10.1109/MC.2018.1151018
Milner R, 1989. Communication and Concurrency. Prentice Hall International, New York, USA.
Molina E, Jacob E, 2018. Software-defined networking in cyber-physical systems: a survey. Comput Electr Eng, 66:407–419. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compeleceng.2017.05.013
NSF, 2006. NSF Workshop on Cyber-Physical Systems. Austin, Texas, USA.
Nygaard K, Dahl OJ, 1978. The development of the SIMULA languages. ACM SIGPLAN Not, 13(8):245–272. https://doi.org/10.1145/960118.808391
Palomar E, Chen XH, Liu Z, et al., 2016. Component-based modelling for scalable smart city systems interoperability: a case study on integrating energy demand response systems. Sensors, 16(11):1810. https://doi.org/10.3390/s16111810
Parnas DL, 1972. On the criteria to be used in decomposing systems into modules. Commun ACM, 15(12):1053–1058. https://doi.org/10.1145/361598.361623
Rajkumar R, Lee I, Sha L, et al., 2010. Cyber-physical systems: the next computing revolution. Proc 47th Design Automation Conf, p.731–736. https://doi.org/10.1145/1837274.1837461
Romero D, Bernus P, Noran O, et al., 2016. The operator 4.0: human cyber-physical systems & adaptive automation towards human-automation symbiosis work systems. Proc IFIP WG 5.7 Int Conf on Advances in Production Management Systems, p.677–686. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51133-7_80
Sangiovanni-Vincentelli A, Damm W, Passerone R, 2012. Taming Dr. Frankenstein: contract-based design for cyber-physical systems. Eur J Contr, 18(3):217–238. https://doi.org/10.3166/ejc.18.217-238
Schätz B, 2016. Platforms for cyber-physical systems—fractal operating system and integrated development environment for the physical world. Proc 3rd Int Workshop on Emerging Ideas and Trends in Engineering of Cyber-Physical Systems, p.1–4. https://doi.org/10.1109/EITEC.2016.7503688
Sha L, Gopalakrishnan S, Liu X, et al., 2008. Cyber-physical systems: a new frontier. Proc IEEE Int Conf on Sensor Networks, Ubiquitous, and Trustworthy Computing, p.1–9. https://doi.org/10.1109/SUTC.2008.85
Sheth A, Anantharam P, Henson C, 2013. Physical-cyber-social computing: an early 21st century approach. IEEE Intell Syst, 28(1):78–82. https://doi.org/10.1109/MIS.2013.20
Sowe SK, Simmon E, Zettsu K, et al., 2016. Cyber-physical-human systems: putting people in the loop. IT Prof, 18(1):10–13. https://doi.org/10.1109/MITP.2016.14
Tan Y, Vuran MC, Goddard S, 2009. Spatio-temporal event model for cyber-physical systems. Proc 29th IEEE Int Conf on Distributed Computing Systems Workshops, p.44–50. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDCSW.2009.82
Tröger P, Werner M, Richling J, 2015. Cyber-physical operating systems—what are the right abstractions? Proc 4th Mediterranean Conf on Embedded Computing, p.13–16. https://doi.org/10.1109/MECO.2015.7181874
Wang SL, Zhan NJ, Zou L, 2015. An improved HHL prover: an interactive theorem prover for hybrid systems. Proc 17th Int Conf on Formal Engineering Methods, p.382–399. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25423-4_25
Weiser M, 1991. The computer for the 21st century. Sci Am, 265(3):94–104.
Wheeler DJ, 1952. The use of sub-routines in programmes. Proc ACM National Meeting, p.235. https://doi.org/10.1145/609784.609816
Wilkes MV, Wheeler DJ, Gill S, 1951. The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer. Addison-Wesley, Wokingham, UK.
Wirsing M, Banatre JP, Hölzl M, et al., 2008. Software-Intensive Systems and New Computing Paradigms—Challenges and Visions. Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Xu LD, Duan L, 2019. Big data for cyber physical systems in Industry 4.0: a survey. Enterp Inform Syst, 13(2):148–169. https://doi.org/10.1080/17517575.2018.1442934
Zegzhda DP, 2016. Sustainability as a criterion for information security in cyber-physical systems. Autom Contr Comput Sci, 50(8):813–819. https://doi.org/10.3103/S0146411616080253
Zeng DZ, Gu L, Pan SL, et al., 2020. Software Defined Systems: Sensing, Communication and Computation. Springer, Cham, Germany.
Zeng J, Yang LT, Lin M, et al., 2020. A survey: cyberphysical-social systems and their system-level design methodology. Fut Gener Comput Syst, 105:1028–1042. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2016.06.034
Zhang MM, Liu Z, Morisset C, et al., 2009. Design and verification of fault-tolerant components. In: Butler M, Jones C, Romanovsky A, et al. (Eds.), Methods, Models and Tools for Fault Tolerance. Springer, Berlin, p.57–84. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00867-2_4
Zhou CC, Hoare CAR, Ravn AP, 1991. A calculus of durations. Inform Process Lett, 40(5):269–276. https://doi.org/10.1016/0020-0190(91)90122-X
Zhou J, Zhou YH, Wang BC, et al., 2019. Human—cyber—physical systems (HCPSs) in the context of new-generation intelligent manufacturing. Engineering, 5(4):624–636. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eng.2019.07.015
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all the authors who made significant effort to submit their work for this special section and the authors of the four papers included in this special section for their effort in revising their manuscripts. Our many thanks go to the reviewers for their dedicated work. We also thank Prof. Jonathan BOWEN, Prof. Shmuel TYSZBEROWICZ, and Mr. Guisen WU for their reading and comments on early versions of this article and the reviewers of this perspective for their comments. Parts of the discussion in this perspective are based on the application of the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation Key Project “Theory of Modelling and Software Defined Method for Systems of Human-Cyber-Physical Computing”. Zhiming LIU, as the coordinator of the project, would like to thank his project colleagues Prof. Wei DONG and Dr. Wan-wei LIU of the National University of Defence Technology, Profs. Miao-miao ZHANG and Guan-jun LIU of Tongji University, and Drs. Heng-jun ZHAO, Bo LIU, and Yuan-rui ZHANG of RISE at Southwest University for the fruitful collaboration and hard work, and Drs. Bin GU and Yu JIANG for their great supports to the preparation for the project application. Zhiming LIU would also like to express his appreciation to his students Quan SUN, Huan TU, Gui-sen WU, Wei ZHANG, Ting-ting ZHANG, Wei ZHAO, et al. for their help.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Project supported in part by the Capacity Development Fund of Southwest University, China (No. SWU116007) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61732019, 61672435, 61811530327, and 62032019)
Contributors
The challenges and research problems in this paper are formulated through long-time discussions and exchanges of ideas between Zhiming LIU and Ji WANG. The research directions are proposed following their personal communications. The paper is typed by Zhiming LIU and checked by Ji WANG.
Compliance with ethics guidelines
Zhiming LIU and Ji WANG declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Zhiming LIU received his MS degree in Computing Science from Software Institute of CAS in 1988 and PhD degree in Computer Science from University of Warwick in 1991. He worked in three universities in the UK during 1988–2005 and 2013–2015, and the United Nations University — International Institute for Software Technology (Macau) during 2002–2013. In 2016 he joined Southwest University in Chongqing as a full-time professor, leading the development of the University Centre for Research and Innovation in Software Engineering (RISE). He is an editorial board member of Frontiers of Information Technology & Electronic Engineering. He has been working in the area of software theory and methods, and is known for work on transformational approach to fault-tolerant and real-time systems, probabilistic duration calculus for system dependability analysis, and the rCOS method for object-oriented and component-based software.
Ji WANG received his BS degree and PhD degree in Computer Science in 1987 and 1995, respectively, from the College of Computer, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China. He is now a full professor at the State Key Laboratory of High Performance Computing, National University of Defense Technology, China. He is an executive associate editor-in-chief of Frontiers of Information Technology & Electronic Engineering. His research interests include formal methods and software engineering.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Liu, Z., Wang, J. Human-cyber-physical systems: concepts, challenges, and research opportunities. Front Inform Technol Electron Eng 21, 1535–1553 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1631/FITEE.2000537
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1631/FITEE.2000537